"Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain." ~Henry David Thoreau
Yesterday, my husband and I were digging holes for new daylilies. Actually, I was watching him dig while I rested my aching knees. As I cheerfully rambled on about daylily breeding, I suddenly noticed that he had stopped working and was frozen in place, staring at a rock in his hand.
"What is it?" I inquired.
"Something strange," he replied. I stood up and peered at the rock. There was a small, perfectly round thing that looked like half of a pearlescent, bright pink bead stuck to the rock. I looked closely at the unnatural object. Then it moved.
"It's a bug!" I exclaimed. As it crawled across the surface of the rock, I saw that it had two tiny black eyes and two perfectly straight, miniature antennae, which looked like whiskers under its eyes. "That's the cutest bug I ever saw!" I cried. "Go get the girls. They'll love it."
White I waited for my husband to return with our daughters, I turned the rock slowly over and over as the little pink beetle crawled around it. He seemed to be looking for a way off the rock. As I expected, the girls were thrilled with our discovery. As we gathered around the rock, there were comments like, "He looks like a cartoon character" and "I wish I had a dress that color." I said, "He thinks that he's stuck on an asteroid floating through space." I'm a big Star Trek fan.
Finally, it was time to say goodbye to our little friend. "I'll bet he likes pansies," I said as I looked for the prettiest flower to set him on. I held the rock next to a lavender-blue pansy, and he jumped onto the flower.
The girls went back into the house, and we went back to our gardening. I reminisced about all the amazing bugs that I've met over the years. The most memorable one was a huge, black and yellow striped beetle that I discovered on the goldenrod. I found this insect when I was photographing the flowers. As I bent over the camera, I jumped back in shock when I saw what looked like a giant yellow jacket. But upon closer inspection, I realized that it was just a beetle mimicking a wasp, probably to trick the birds into leaving him alone. His color blended so well with the goldenrod that the disguise also served the purpose of hiding him from hungry birds.
Is nature amazing or what? I have hundreds of different plants in my garden, and every species seems to have a purpose. They all go together to make an incredibly diverse and interesting ecological system. My yard is a totally different world than it was when we first moved here. I enjoy all the wildlife that lives here or visits. I feel sorry for people who only grow lawn grass. The only wildlife that lawn grass supports is lawn grubs, and who wants those?
I think that this lesson applies to human society. I believe that there are two opposing forces at work in society -- the force that encourages freedom, diversity, creativity and growth, and the force that suppresses it. People seem to be polarized in their attraction to one force or the other. For example, people who have a very restricted view of life and "the way things should be" seek to control and suppress others. This is a powerful force in government, which tries to control the masses by leveling them and making them all the same. They attempt to do this by taking from creative, hardworking people and giving to lazy people who do nothing but watch TV and play computer games. This can be so discouraging to the creative minds that they simply give up and quit working so hard. When creative, hardworking people lose their motivation to create, earn and expand, society goes into a downward spiral.
On a smaller scale, we see this mindset in local communities. For example, many communities have laws against growing native wildflowers, which they refer to as "weeds". My friend who is a nurseryman and a collector of rare flowers is always battling the city over his garden. They claim that his flowers and ornamental grasses are weeds because they grow over 12" tall, which is the limit for how tall plants can grow in front yards in his part of the city. Is that insane, or what? City bureaucrats are always threatening to fine him for "not mowing his lawn," which is not a lawn at all. It's a wildflower collection.
Michael Pollan says, "A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule."
Ignorance and unconsciousness show up in the most common places -- in fads like clothing fashions, car models, music, etc. This is called the "herd mentality". It happens when people are not fully conscious of the choices they make and how they are influenced by others. Every so often, my kids ask me why people do what they do, and I say, "Because people are just monkeys mimicking each other. They don't think for themselves." Psychologically, it feels safe to run with the herd. But is it really the best thing to do? Sometimes the herd runs over a cliff. Whole societies have destroyed themselves through unconscious herding behavior. The stock market is the classic example of herding behavior. I enjoy reading Robert Prechter's books on socionomics, in which he explains this phenomenon and its relevance to all areas of life.
Well, back to gardening. While other people spend Saturday morning mowing and edging their golf-course-perfect lawns, I'm photographing flowers and collecting seeds. People wonder how I can handle having an unpredictable, constantly changing menagerie of plants that are beyond the control of human beings. But I enjoy my garden because it reminds me that control is an illusion. People only seek control because they are fearful. When you let go of fear, you let go of the need to control everything and everyone around you. You realize that the only thing you can really control is yourself.
What is fear? Philosophers and psychologists say, "All fear is the fear of death." More specifically, it is the fear of death of the ego. People aren't really afraid to die physically. They are afraid of losing their ego -- their false ideas about who they are and the way things should be. It is the fear of losing control. They resist this fear by tightening their grip on whatever they can grasp and cling to -- their spouse, children, pets, property, and everything else in their environment. The problem is that they don't recognize the true source of their fear, so they can't face it head on.
Next time a controlling person comes into your life and says, "You should....", just remember that this person is fearful, and they are trying to deal with their fear in an unresourceful way by attempting to control other people. The more unconscious and stuck-in-the-ego a person is, the more they will try to control others. But you don't need to worry about those people because you know that the only person you can control is yourself. And that's hard enough. When facing nosy people, controlling my tongue and biting back the retorts that pop into my mind (like, "Quit shoulding on me!") requires all of my willpower.
So, what's the point of this article? I guess I'm expressing my love of freedom, diversity, creativity and growth. I think that these are good things, not bad things that should be resisted or destroyed. Conscious, open-minded and compassionate people love all forms of life (except maybe mosquitos), and they allow them to be what they are. They enjoy new experiences and the beauty and diversity that nature has to offer.
Much of a person's attitude about life comes from early childhood experiences. If you were raised in an oppressive environment, you may find it hard to accept diversity, and you may feel threatened by the seeming unpredictability of nature. But unpredictability is not chaos. Nature is only unpredictable to those who don't understand it and can't see the whole picture. To God, it is all perfectly ordered and sensible. Our job, then, is to get to know it, experience it, and learn from it. Eventually, we will understand it.
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